AppsFlyer, a San Francisco-headquartered company offering marketing analytics, earlier this week announced that it secured USD 15 million in an extended Series D round led by Salesforce Ventures, bringing its total funding to USD 225 million.
The fresh capital raises its valuation to USD 2 billion. The news comes seven months after the firm raised USD 210 million in a Series D round led by General Atlantic in January. Since then, it has witnessed “tremendous growth,” with an annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding USD 200 million. Having reached 1,000 employees globally, the company plans to increase its global headcount in 2021.
“The pandemic has aggressively driven a shift in how the global marketplace uses technology, making the ever-innovative and always-resilient APAC one of the few winners from this year’s economic turbulence,” said APAC president and managing director Ronen Mense. He told KrASIA that many businesses have accelerated their digital transformation as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, with mobile taking front and center stage in their strategic focus. “That’s a major plus for us, here, in mobile-first, often mobile-only APAC,” he said.
According to a study by the company, spending on advertisement that directs users to apps will increase by 70% to USD 64.1 billion this year. APAC is predicted to account for 46.8% or USD 30 billion of the overall growth. It has prompted AppsFlyer to strengthen its foothold in the region, where the firm opened its seventh office in Jakarta in January and the eighth in Sydney recently.
“The secret sauce for our success over the last nine years has been prioritizing our customers and their end-users,” Mense added. “As a strategic focus going forward, this additional investment will be used to continue doing exactly that.”
Founded in 2011, AppsFlyer operates one of the world’s largest marketing attribution software, which allows users to measure the performance of marketing and advertising campaigns in different digital channels by loading a small Javascript code snippet to the site to collect user activity data. The code snippet also helps maintain the security of the site. AppsFlyer’s attribution software has a 74% and 59% share in the Android and iOS market respectively, according to research conducted by Mobbo in 2018.
Demand in fraud protection
While AppsFlyer didn’t want to reveal data on its profitability or revenue share of the Asia Pacific region, Mense highlighted that there is “increasing demand” across its marketing analytics and fraud protection products. The company says it is connected to a marketplace of over 8,000 partners, including Facebook, Google, Apple Search Ads, Twitter, TikTok Ads, and that its customers include notable names such as Minecraft, Nike, NBC Universal, and Tencent.
AppsFlyer claims that it has secured more than USD 300 million in funding since 2011, from investors that include General Atlantic, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), Qumra Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Magma Venture Partners, and Eight Roads Ventures.
Competitors in the sector include China-based TalkingData, the US-based Mixpanel and Kochava, as well as the German company Adjust.